Two recurring shows
This page builds two shows that air on the station this site is written from. US Countdown is a Friday morning countdown of what America is listening to, with the presenter giving a fact about each record before it plays. The Boneyard is a heavy metal show six nights a week, briefed on the bands it should play, with two guest hosts who sit in now and then.
Both are ordinary slots on the timetable, set up once and aired every week. Make a show walks through the slot editor field by field; this page uses it twice, for two different shapes of show.
You need a station on air with music. The countdown needs the Last.fm plugin with an API key, because its charts come from Last.fm. It also needs Play records the station does not own yet on under Settings → Rotation, because a chart names records your library mostly does not hold. The Boneyard is steered by its brief, which works best with Let a model choose what plays switched on under Settings → Words (Give the station a model).
1. Make the presenter tell the story
Do this first for the countdown's host. The countdown on this station is presented by the built-in Countdown host, who is set up this way already; any character you write can be.
- Open Voice → Characters and open the character who will present.
- Find How much they lean on what the station knows and choose Keen — the story behind every record.
- Save.
A keen presenter is handed more of what the station knows (a note about the album and the artist as well as the track) and builds each link out of that story, with a longer break to tell it in. Lighter settings exist for a show where the music matters more than the talk. The Boneyard's host is set to Sometimes — one fact now and then, because a metal show is mostly riffs.
The presenter only says facts the station has stored. Each one is a sentence the station took from a source, such as the record's Wikipedia article, and kept with the words that support it. A record the station knows little about gets a shorter link, never an invented one. Facts and claims explains where the facts come from. Two things give the station more to say:
- Enable the Wikipedia and MusicBrainz plugins, if they are not on already.
- Switch on Let a model find trivia in the articles under Settings → Words. It reads past each article's first line for the details people remember. It runs in the background and takes days to get through a library, so turn it on well before the first show.
A countdown is the hardest case for this, because this week's chart is full of records the station has only just looked up. Expect the early weeks to have shorter links than the records you already own.
2. US Countdown, Friday mornings
Open Programme → Timetable and click 09:00 on a Friday. Fill in the New slot:
| Field | For US Countdown |
|---|---|
| Name | US Countdown |
| Starts at / Ends at | 09:00 and 13:00 |
| Days | Friday only. |
| Playing from | Top tracks in United States, from the Charts group. Last.fm publishes a chart for each country, and one for the world. |
| Played | Countdown, ending on number one. |
| Hosted by | Countdown host. |
| Mode | Setlist, so the records play exactly in the chart's order with nothing added. |
| Host talks between records | Ticked. A setlist is silent between records otherwise. |
Leave From year and To year empty. They keep a chart to records from those years, so on this week's chart they would leave almost nothing to count down.
Save. Each Friday at nine the station reads the chart as it stands that week, keeps as much of the top of it as fits in four hours, and counts down to number one. Number one may start just before 13:00 and finish a few minutes into the next show. Turn on Say each record's chart position as well if you want the presenter to give the position, and the record's highest one where the chart says.
A countdown from a range of years
The charts the plugins publish are this week's. For "the biggest records of 1980 to 1989", play a playlist instead:
- Make or import a playlist of that decade's hits, ordered the way they should air: the lowest position first and number one last. Under Library → Playlists, import it as one of the station's own playlists, so a long list starts on time.
- In the slot, set Playing from to that playlist, Mode to Setlist, and tick Host talks between records.
A playlist plays from the top every time the slot opens, and the next show starts when its time comes. Unlike a chart it is not cut to fit, so a playlist longer than the slot never reaches its number one. Make it about as long as the slot.
3. The Boneyard, six nights a week
Click 16:30 on a Monday and fill in another slot:
| Field | For The Boneyard |
|---|---|
| Name | The Boneyard |
| Starts at / Ends at | 16:30 and 22:00 |
| Days | Monday to Saturday. |
| Playing from | Leave it empty, so the station chooses the records against the brief. |
| Hosted by | A character written for the show. |
| Asked to play | The brief below. |
| From year | 1968, the year heavy metal starts for this show. To year stays empty. |
| Mode | Rotation, the default. |
The brief, as it is on air, shortened:
All heavy metal, loud. Classics: Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Dio. Thrash and groove: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Testament, Pantera. Death and black: Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Behemoth. Modern: Slipknot, Ghost, Gatecreeper, Alestorm. Doom: Type O Negative. Prog: Tool, Gojira, Mastodon, Dream Theater. Mix eras and styles across the hour, riffs first.
Name the acts. A brief that only says "heavy metal" leaves the model to decide what that means, and it reaches for the same few bands every night. A brief that names acts gets records by them, a share of every hour, including acts your library holds only one or two records by: the station looks those up at your music providers. Grouping the acts by style and ending with how to mix them ("mix eras and styles across the hour") is what keeps five and a half hours from sounding like one album.
The period does a different job. A brief steers the model but cannot fence it in; a year is a number, so every way the station picks a record honours it, the model and the library draw alike.
Guest hosts
Under Guest hosts, the Boneyard has two characters who sit in for its host at random: one about one night in four, the other about one night in five. Random nights are worked out from the date, so the console and the station always agree on who is on, and a guest knows whose show they are sitting in on. Programme → Today says who is presenting tonight. Guest hosts explains the gap kept between visits.
Save. Saving changes nothing on air now; the station moves when the slot next begins.
4. Check it
Programme → Today shows the slot on air now and what comes next. When a show starts, the Desk shows it on air with its presenter, and the running order fills with its records. To hear a presenter before the first show, audition them (Write a character).
With Claude
With Claude connected and allowed to Read and manage (how), you can ask for both at once:
Make two weekly shows. US Countdown on Fridays from nine until one, counting down the Last.fm chart for the United States as a setlist, with the Countdown host talking between records. And The Boneyard, Monday to Saturday from half past four until ten, all heavy metal from 1968 on. Write it a brief that names the bands by style. Check the timetable for clashes first and show me what you will create.
Claude is good at the Boneyard's half: turning "heavy metal" into a brief that names forty acts across six styles. Ask it to suggest acts you have not thought of, then edit the list.
If it goes wrong
- The countdown is short, or refused. Nothing on the chart could be found at your music providers, a period on the slot ruled most of it out, or Play records the station does not own yet is off under Settings → Rotation.
- The countdown plays with no talk. Host talks between records is not ticked. A setlist is silent between records without it.
- The presenter says little about the records. The station knows little about them yet. Check that the Wikipedia plugin is enabled, and give Let a model find trivia in the articles time to work.
- The Boneyard plays the same few bands. Name more acts in the brief, grouped by style.
- The Boneyard plays the usual rotation. Let a model choose what plays is off under Settings → Words.
- The slot will not save. It overlaps another block. Move one of them.
Next
- The programme for co-hosts, and specials for a show that runs only on some dates.
- Characters for the rest of what a presenter's sheet controls.